MSConfig (officially called System Configuration in

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, which was released five years before, at the time being the longest time span between successive releases of ...

Windows 7 Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, ...

Windows 8 Windows 8 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on August 1, 2012; it was subsequently made available for download via MSDN and TechNet on August 15, 2012, and later to ...

Windows 10 Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It is the direct successor to Windows 8.1, which was released nearly two years earlier. It was released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on ...

, or

Windows 11 Windows 11 is the latest major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system, released in October 2021. It is a free upgrade to its predecessor, Windows 10 (2015), and is available for any Windows 10 devices that meet the new Windows 11 ...

and Microsoft System Configuration Utility in previous

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...

s) is a system utility to troubleshoot the

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ...

startup process. It can disable or re-enable software,

device driver In computing, a device driver is a computer program that operates or controls a particular type of device that is attached to a computer or automaton. A driver provides a software interface to hardware devices, enabling operating systems and o ...

s and

Windows service In Windows NT operating systems, a Windows service is a computer program that operates in the background. It is similar in concept to a Unix daemon. A Windows service must conform to the interface rules and protocols of the Service Control Manag ...

s that run at startup, or change boot parameters. It is bundled with all versions of Microsoft Windows operating systems since

Windows 98 Windows 98 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of Microsoft Windows operating systems. The second operating system in the 9x line, it is the successor to Windows 95, and was released to ...

except

Windows 2000 Windows 2000 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft and oriented towards businesses. It was the direct successor to Windows NT 4.0, and was released to manufacturing on December 15, 1999, and was offici ...

Windows 95 Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of operating systems. The first operating system in the 9x family, it is the successor to Windows 3.1x, and was released to manufacturi ...

and Windows 2000 users can download the utility as well, although it was not designed for them.

Uses

MSConfig is often used for speeding up the Microsoft Windows startup process of the machine. According to Microsoft, MSConfig was not meant to be used as a startup management program.

Features

MSConfig is a troubleshooting tool which is used to temporarily disable or re-enable software, device drivers or Windows services that run during startup process to help the user determine the cause of a problem with Windows. Some of its functionality varies by Windows versions: * In Windows 98 and Windows Me, it can configure advanced troubleshooting settings pertaining to these operating systems. It can also launch common system tools. * In Windows 98, it can back up and restore startup files. * In Windows Me, it has also been updated with three new tabs called "Static VxDs", "Environment" and "International". The Static VxDs tab allows users to enable or disable static virtual device drivers to be loaded at startup, the ''Environment'' tab allows users to enable or disable

environment variable An environment variable is a dynamic-named value that can affect the way running processes will behave on a computer. They are part of the environment in which a process runs. For example, a running process can query the value of the TEMP envi ...

s, and the ''International'' tab allows users to set international language keyboard layout settings that were formerly set via the real-mode MS-DOS configuration files. A "Cleanup" button on the "Startup" tab allows cleaning up invalid or deleted startup entries. * In Windows Me and Windows XP versions, it can restore an individual file from the original Windows installation set. * On Windows NT-based operating systems prior to Windows Vista, it can set various BOOT.INI switches. * In Windows XP and Windows Vista, it can hide all operating system services for troubleshooting. * In Windows Vista and later, the tool allows configuring various switches for

Windows Boot Manager The booting process of Windows Vista and later versions differ from the startup process part of previous versions of Windows. In this article, unless otherwise specified, what is said about Windows Vista also applies to all later NT operatin ...

and Boot Configuration Data. It also gained additional support for launching a variety of tools, such as system information, other configuration areas, such as Internet options, and the ability to enable/disable UAC. An update is available for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 that adds the ''Tools'' tab.

Uses

Features

References

Further reading